A Wanderer's Heart

I can't tell you how often we hear, "You guys are ALWAYS traveling!". 

We hear it a lot. Like a lot, a lot.

In the nearly thirteen years that Matthew and I have been married, our goals and priorities have shifted. These changes have been the biggest factor in our ability to travel like we do.  When we got married, we bought our little, fixer-upper, starter home. It would suffice we thought, until we could buy our, "real" house.

 Then we took a Dave Ramsey course. We got serious about paying off debt and not entering into any additional debt.  It resulted in a paradigm shift that changed everything about what we wanted our lives to look like. We certainly haven't embraced every aspect of the "Dave" lifestyle, but we've definitely applied it to create a life that we're able to live to the fullest.

Somewhere along the way, as we poured our sweat and tears into our little house, it became our "real" house. It became the place that we chose to raise our boys. It became the place where we chose to find contentment.  It's not that we couldn't have bought a bigger house- it's that we chose the freedom that our little house (and little mortgage) afforded us.   The house is a super important part to our story.  The day that we decided that we wanted the, "world to be our backyard" rather than actually owning a bigger backyard- was the day that we committed to our wanderers' hearts.

Traveling brings us happiness. It brings us perspective. It brings us joy.  We love seeing places that we've never seen before. We love immersing ourselves into cultures that differ from own.  We love how we're collecting memories and experiences instead of things.

This is what works for US. This is what makes US happy. That's important. What makes us happy, might not make you happy.

I plan to write more about the hows & whys of our travels. I can tell you that we don't travel like "most people" and I want to talk more about that. I want to talk about the places we've gone. I want a place to record the memories. 

So that's what this will be. A place to record the ramblings of my wanderer's heart every now and then.